1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of communications, and more specifically to improved systems and methods for communicating through Internet protocol.
2. Summary of the Related Art
With few exceptions, the telecommunications field embraces and indeed encourages the widespread distribution of technology and business capital. A corollary to this proposition is that the costs of telecommuting, whether by telephone, mobile phone or computer, are often borne equally by all parties in roughly equal shares. Thus, most businesses and individuals invest in their own telephones, mobile services, computers and Internet access. In particular, with the advent of Internet protocol and other packet switching technologies, there are a greater number of hubs for communication, and accordingly a greater amount of bandwidth for transmitting information across the world. A primary benefit of packet switching is that a greater volume of information can be transmitted globally as compared to traditional circuit switching communication means. As such, a modest increase in broadband capacity often results in a proportionally large increase in the total volume of information that can be communicated over the new network.
One technology that has been quick to adapt to the spread of broadband and packet switching models is voice over Internet protocol, or VoIP. This service permits users to configure their computers or Internet-accessible devices for receiving analog voice signals and transmitting them across the Internet as digital packets of information. At the receiving end of a voice transmission, the digital packets are received, assembled into the original message, and output to a recipient in the form of an audio signal. In this manner, millions of individuals and businesses are conducting their telephonic business over the Internet as opposed to over analog, circuit switched telephone lines. As broadband access increases, one can reasonably expect that the costs of VoIP access will decrease while the total volume of VoIP users will increase.
Unfortunately, even as the costs of VoIP services decrease, the current business models for generic telecommunications will fail to maintain pace with the growing number of users. The primary issue is that in order to make a telephone call over VoIP, a user must be certain that the intended recipient also has VoIP access, at least until there is technology that permits packet switched information to be carried on circuit switched networks. As expected then, new VoIP customers tend to come in pairs or groups that join collectively to reduce the costs of their common communications. One can conclude therefore that the number of individual users that subscribe to VoIP service is relatively limited, as it makes no sense to be VoIP enabled in a communication vacuum.
Moreover, as VoIP technology is still is its infancy, it has had little to no effect on the business market and traditional mechanisms for doing business. On the one hand, business communications are largely over internal networks, and thus traditional telephones and Internet communications have provided sufficient for the bulk of companies. Likewise, it is reasonable to assume that the bulk of calls received by businesses from third parties are initiated by the latter party, and under most telecommunications plans, one is not charged for incoming communications. As there is usually no increase in marginal cost to the business for communicating with its clients or customers, businesses have had little reason to invest in newer technologies for client development and customer satisfaction.
As VoIP usage increases, however, it can be expected that businesses will begin to utilize it for at least communicating over their internal networks. Likewise, it should be anticipated that in the near future, the bulk of communications would be transmitted over broadband lines, including VoIP communications. It is therefore desirable to enable businesses to more easily utilize data transmission services that utilize broadband and packet switching technologies.
In particular, there is a need in the art for a VoIP service that can be utilized by businesses for both internal communications as well as receiving communications from existing or potential customers. Additionally, there is a need in the art for widely distributing a VoIP service via other means, such as through a business web page, that enables casual web surfers to directly communicate with the owner or representative of the web page. There is a further need in the art for a VoIP service that can be readily distributed through the Internet via its subscribers, i.e. a service that is self-promoting through usage of existing technology such as web pages with embedded software applications. Lastly, there is a need in the art for a VoIP service that distributes the costs of usage to the recipient, in particular in the case of businesses that receive innumerable calls from existing and potential customers and clients.